CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 23:30. Mixed wine—i.e., wine mixed with strong spices.
Proverbs 23:31. When it giveth his colour, etc., literally, “When it showeth its eye.” This may refer to its brightness, or to the head, or pearl of the wine. “When it moveth itself,” etc., rather “when it glideth down with ease.”
Proverbs 23:33. Strange women, rather “strange things.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 23:29-35
THE DRUNKARD’S PICTURE
I. The drunkard is an entire inversion of man as God intended him to be. God made man’s mind to rule his body, but the drunkard’s bodily appetites rule his mind. God gave man an intellect to guide his actions; He intended the various limbs of his body to be the servants of his will, and to obey the dictates of his reason. But the drunkard not only gives up all his spiritual and intellectual power to his body, but all his other bodily powers to the rule of one sense—that of his palate. Men who are not awake to their spiritual and mental needs might be expected to have as much regard for their animal wants, and to be as careful to avoid bodily suffering as the brute creation. But it is not so with the drunkard—although nights and days of privation and suffering are often the fruits of an hour’s drinking, he voluntarily undergoes the former in order to enjoy the latter. Not only is conscience and reason and heart sacrificed to his mouth, but every other bodily sense is made to serve the one sense and every other part of the body to suffer, that one part may be gratified if but for a moment.
II. He is an entire inversion of what we might expect even a fallen man to be. Looking at man as he is when he lives for this world only, he is generally alive to his own immediate temporal interests and careful to avoid in the future what has brought him suffering in the past. But it is not so with the slave to drink. If only wife and children had to lead lives of misery and his own life was a constant round of even animal enjoyment, the drunkard’s career would not be such an unaccountable infatuation. Human selfishness would be sufficient to account for it. But who suffers like the drunkard himself? The wise man enumerates some of his miseries—woe, grief, contentions and wounds without cause, the stings of remorse, the disordered brain, and entire loss of consciousness and of power to defend one’s own life and property—this is the drunkard’s heritage. And in the intervals between his madness he knows it and drinks to the dregs the bitter cup of bodily and mental misery that must always follow the immoderate use of the wine cup. And yet his language is “I will seek it yet again.” The child that has been burnt dreads the fire, but the poor drunkard scarred from head to foot with the marks of the flames, seems with all his other losses to have lost also the natural instinct of self-preservation and the power of learning anything from the great teacher—experience.
III. A consideration of the strength and nature of the drunkard’s chain should lead all to shun that which enslaved him. When we consider what havoc intoxicating drink has wrought, it is marvellous that men do not turn from it with loathing; that they are not afraid to play with so deadly, and yet so treacherous an enemy to mankind. When the sailor knows that there is a treacherous whirlpool in the ocean, which has engulfed a thousand noble vessels, he is careful to give it a wide berth, to keep far beyond the outermost ring of the current. But the habit of men in general seems to be to try how near they can come to this moral and social gulf of death, without being drawn beneath the waters. The experiment is fraught with deadly peril, and is often a fatal one. Solomon’s advice is to ensure safety, by not even “looking upon the wine when it is red.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
There is mention made of a monk at Prague, who having heard at shrift the confessions of many drunkards, wondered at it, and for experiment would try his brain with this sin, and accordingly stole himself drunk. Now, after the vexation of three sick days, to all that confessed that sin he enjoined no other penance than this: “Go and be drunk again.” Surely his meaning was like that of Seneca, that drunkenness was a torment and affliction to itself.—Spencer.
Drunkenness is a special water at the devil’s banquet. This sin is a horrible self-theft … Thieves cannot steal lands, unless they be Westminster Hall thieves, crafty contenders that eat out a true title with a false evidence; but the drunkard robs himself of his lands. Now he dissolves an acre, and then an acre, into the pot, till he hath ground all his ground at the malt quern, and run all his patrimony through his throat. Thus he makes himself the living tomb of his forefathers—of his posterity. He needs not trouble his sick mind with a will, or distrust the fidelity of executors.—T. Adams.
Proverbs 23:29. The best that can come of drunkenness is repentance—that fairest daughter of so foul a mother—and that is not without its woe, and alas! its sorrow and redness of eyes with weeping for sin.—Trapp.
Proverbs 23:31. He that would avoid the commission of sin must avoid the occasion of sin. If we would not fall down the hill we must beware of coming near the brow of it. Keep thee far from an evil matter. When the wine laughs in thy face then shut thine eyes lest it steal into thine heart. A guest may easily be kept out of the house at first, but if once entertained it is hard to turn him out of doors. When the governor of a fort once comes to parley with the enemy that besiegeth him there is great fear that the place will be surrendered.—Swinnock.
Proverbs 23:33. One remarkable peculiarity of this chapter is the junction and alternation of these two kindred sins. There they stand, like two plants of death, each growing on its own independent root, and nourished by the same soil, but cleaving close to each other by congeniality of nature, and twisted round each other for mutual support.… The alliance, so generally formed and so firmly maintained between drunkenness and licentiousness, is a master-stroke of Satan’s policy. It is when men have looked upon the deceitful cup, and received into their blood the poison of its sting, that their eyes behold “strange women;” and when they have fallen into that “narrow pit,” they run back to hide their shame, at least from themselves, in the maddening draught.—Arnot.
Proverbs 23:34. The passage is interesting, as showing what Psalms 104:25-26; Psalms 107:23-30, also show, the increased familiarity of the Israelites with a sea life.—Plumptre.
It is very foul weather in which a drunkard saileth. For as St. Ambrose speaketh, the multitude of lusts in him do raise a great tempest, which toss his mind to and fro, sailing as it were in the narrow sea of his body, so that he cannot be pilot to itself.… But that which maketh the drunkard’s case worst of all is this: it is a shipwreck of the body only which in a tempest is feared, but he maketh shipwreck of his soul if repentance be not a plank of safety to him.—Jermin.